The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure. Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in the present disclosure and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Current 3GPP specifications may use service set identifiers (SSIDs) or homogenous extended SSIDs (HESSIDs) to identify a WLAN to which an access point (AP) belongs. SSIDs and HESSIDs will be collectively referred to herein as SSIDs. Specifically, the use of SSIDs may occur during a network discovery and selection process when a UE on the 3GPP network is attempting to connect with a WLAN.
However, SSIDs may not be guaranteed to be unique. Additionally, if a UE is bound by rules of a roaming agreement between the 3GPP network and one or more WLAN service providers, the UE may need to have knowledge of all of the SSIDs of all of the service provider partners of the 3GPP network. Management of the SSIDs can become difficult because each of the WLAN service providers may have multiple SSIDs. Additionally, WLAN service providers may occasionally add or remove an SSID. Another difficulty with managing SSIDs is that new roaming agreements may be put in place, or existing roaming agreements may be terminated, making it difficult to manage the SSIDs of all of the WLAN service providers that the 3GPP network operator has a roaming agreement with. Finally, not all SSIDs may be broadcast over the air, making it difficult to discover WLAN roaming relationships and public land mobile networks (PLMNs) supported by the un-broadcast SSIDs.